Recently my partner’s (insufficiently backed up) laptop disk bit the dust which happened at the most inconvenient time. We’ve just moved, no broadband yet (agh!) and the only things handy were some outdated Debian and Mandrake installers and some recentish Ubuntu disks.

While we’ve both relied on Ubuntu Live on many occasions (surviving friend’s Windows computers when visiting) we haven’t ever considered an Ubuntu installation.

It took a little convincing on my part that it would be worth the effort (my partner is a Gentoo girl through and through) and well she has an adversion to Mandrake/diva.

When installing Ubuntu it is absolutely essential to add the “restricted” packages to apt, however there is also a bunch of packages from the great guys at the Penguin Liberation Front who i’d come across before when I was running a Mandrake/diva desktop for work. These guys do all of the stuff the distros won’t touch (DivX etc).

You can add the Ubuntu repository with:

then do an “apt-update” and search, seek and install the bits you need (e.g. DivX decoders etc).